June 2026 AMS virtual seminar: Leela Maya Rizal, on culturomics & microbial communities of wheat stubble!
- ausmycsoc
- 3 minutes ago
- 2 min read
We invite you to attend our upcoming AMS virtual seminar. This month, we're delighted to feature Leela Maya Rizal, a mycologist and microbiologist at CSIRO.
Culturomics reveals functionally important degraders and antagonists in conserved wheat stubble
Leela Maya Rizal
CSIRO,
Agriculture and Food,
Black Mountain Canberra
Thursday, 25 June 2026
12 pm (AEST) / 2 pm (NZST)
Summary
In Australian conservation agriculture, retained wheat stubble supports soil health, but its slow decomposition promotes stubble borne pathogens, hindering crop establishment, yield, and grain quality. Current chemical mitigation strategies offer only short term relief. To address this, we applied a culturomics guided approach to identify stubble associated microbes with residue degrading, nitrogen fixing, and antagonistic traits for rational synthetic community (SynCom) design. Wheat stubble sampled at day 0 and day 98 underwent combinatorial culturing on standard and stubble based media. From 239 isolates (194 bacteria, 45 fungi), we observed a temporal shift from Gram negative dominance to a balanced community. Key degraders belonged to Bacillota and Actinomycetota, with the latter showing strongest antagonism to Fusarium crown rot (FCR). Trichoderma and Penicillium exhibited consistent multifunctionality, including thermotolerant antifungal activity enhanced at 40 °C and 50°C. Functional filtering identified eight bacteria and eight fungi for SynCom assembly, providing a strategy to accelerate stubble decomposition, suppress pathogens, and enhance resilience in conservation agriculture.
About Leela
Dr Leela Rizal is a mycologist and microbiologist specialising in fungal ecology and applied microbiology, with research experience across leading institutions in Thailand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Her work integrates culturomics, genomics, and ecological approaches to unlock the potential of fungi and bacteria across plant, insect, food, and medical systems. She completed her PhD at the University of Queensland, focusing on Australian entomopathogenic fungi (EPF), where she advanced methods for accurate species identification, explored ecological interactions with insect hosts, and optimised fungal spores for sustainable insect biocontrol. Her research combining genomic analysis and experimental observations of Beauveria bassiana fruiting body formation provides evidence for sexual reproduction in a genus long considered asexual, offering new insights into fungal evolution and biocontrol potential.
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